A museum database (especially a commercial one) may not function in one of the following standard formats, but it should at least be able to export data into one of them. These descriptions are taken from the cited references.
(please refer to http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata)
Metadata is data about data. The term refers to any data used to aid in the identification, description and location of networked electronic resources. A libray catalogue record could be described as metadata in that the catalogue record is "data about data" (the location, etc., of the book). A list or table of the fields used in a database is also metadata, because it describes where to find certain information or data. The term metadata is increasingly used in the information world to specify records which refer to digital resources available across a network. This kind of metadata record refers to another piece of information capable of existing in a separate form from the metaata record itself. Metadata can also hold location information within the record to allow direct document delivery from appropriate application software; in other words, the record may contain detailed acces information and network addresses. When standards are agreed upon for metadata structure, it is possible for two museums to share information more directly and easily. Some standards for metadata are being explored in the West today are Z39.50, SGML, and MARC.
ANSI/NISO Z39.50 see http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/lt/1998/news955.html and http://www.cni.org/pub/NISO/docs/Z39.50-1992/ and http://www.cni.org/pub/NISO/docs/Z39.50-brochure
ANSI/NISO Z39.50 is the American National Standard Informatio Retrieval Application Service Definition and Protocol Specification for Open Systems Interconnection, developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Its purpose is to allow one computer operating in a client mode to perform information retrieval queries against another computer acting as an information server. Software on the server preforms a search on one or more databases and creates a result set of records that meet the criteria of the search request. The server returns records from the result set to the client for processing. The power of Z39.50 is that it separates the user interface on the client side from the information servers, search engines, and databases - so it provides a consistent view of information from a wide variety of sources, and offers clients the capability to integrate information from a range of databases and servers. WAIS is an example of this kind of technology.
Standard Guide Mark-up Language see http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgml-xml.html
SGML is an ISO standard for defining document structures for the application of mark-up schemes. It provides a consistent and precise manner of applying mark-up for describing the parts of a document, enabling exchange of documents between different computer systems. SGML does not directly define any types of content data, and does not restrict the type of data contained in a document. It is flexible enough to describe any logically structured set of information. SGML itself is not a mark-up scheme - it does not define mark-up tags nor does it provide a template for a particular type of document - rather it denotes a way of describing any mark-up scheme. By using SGML, many mark-up schemes can be developed, one for each document type or class. In SGML-based environments, document formatting is handled at document presentation time rather than at the time data is entered. special advantage of SGML encoded documents is the flexibility that the coding gives them to be reused for different purposes, and to interact with systems that didn't even exist when they were created. HTML is an SGML mark-up scheme.
MARC (machine readable catalogue) see http://www.ukoln.ac.um/metadata/review
The MARC (machine readable catalogue) format is not a single format but a family of formats, all with a similar record structure and similar method of tagging data, but with significant differences in the manner of implementation. There are three components to MARC records; record structure (as with an ANSI or ISO standard), content designation (the tags, for the Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congree headings, etc.), and the data itself. MARC originated in the late 1960's as a response to opportunities offered by the computeriazation of libraries and printing. MARC was a means to allow the exchange of catalogue records between cooperating libraries, it was a format for national bibliographies to use for printed bibliographic records, and it was used by bibliographic agencies for their supply of records to libraries. As library systems became computerized, MARC was used in library automation software as the basis for manipulating library records for display and indexing.